ABC is the most-watched network in the fall season’s first week

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STILL HIGHLY WATCHED: “Grey’s Anatomy,” featuring Ellen Pompeop and Patrick Dempsey, was the top-rated show among the 18-49 age group and helped lead ABC to victory in the first week of the fall TV season.

ABC, seeking to reignite a ratings turnaround that faltered last year, finished the first week of the new broadcast season as the No. 1 U.S. network in prime time, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.

Buoyed by such hits as “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Dancing with the Stars,” ABC ranked as the most watched network overall for the week ended Sept. 30 and tied with NBC for first place among viewers aged 18 to 49, the group most prized by advertisers.

The 18-49 ranking for NBC, which has struggled to shake off its own three-year long ratings slump, comes with an asterisk, though. NBC benefited from a Nielsen rule change that allowed it to add viewers to last Monday’s season premiere of “Heroes” from a Saturday replay of the show.

Starting this season, Nielsen agreed that viewers watching a repeat in the same week as the original broadcast could be counted in the ratings tally as long as the replay carries the same advertising content.

NBC enjoyed the added benefit of being able to factor out what otherwise would have been a low-rated hour of TV from its weekly ratings average.

The return of “Grey’s Anatomy” ended up as the week’s highest-rated single show in the 18-49 demographic. Going head to head with ABC’s hit medical drama, the CBS powerhouse cop series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” scored the week’s biggest total audience with its season premiere.

ABC had the most watched new series so far this season with the debut of its “Grey’s Anatomy” spinoff, “Private Practice,” but NBC’s sci-fi action remake, “Bionic Woman,” was No. 1 in the 18-49 race among new shows.

Those two shows, and ABC’s male ensemble drama “Big Shots,” were the only new programs to crack Nielsen’s top 20 by either measure during the first week.

After two years of solid growth, the Walt Disney Co-owned ABC stumbled in the ratings last season, due in part to the loss of its highly watched “Monday Night Football” franchise, which moved to sister sports network ESPN.

General Electric Co-controlled NBC, has languished in the Nielsens since longtime comedy favorites “Friends” and “Frasier” ended their runs in 2004.

All four major networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox – posted year-to-year ratings declines for the first week of the 2007-08 season, which broadcast executives attribute to rapidly changing viewing habits.

In particular, industry experts point to the growing use of digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, which let viewers easily save their favorite shows and watch them at their leisure.